Items18The creator’s order
- 1
TelestrationsA reliable icebreaker because nobody needs to be good at drawing; it actually helps if they aren't. Everyone sketches a secret word and passes their book. The next player guesses what the sketch shows, the next draws that guess, and so on until every book comes home.
The reveal, when a simple word…0 - 2
Happy SalmonThere are no turns. Everyone flips cards at the same moment and shouts the action shown, hunting for someone holding a match. Matched players perform it on the spot: a high five, a fist bump, swapping places, or the fishtail slap on the forearm that gives the game its name.
A full game lasts about…0 - 3
MonikersThree rounds, one deck of names. First you can say anything to get your team to guess the card, then only a single word, then you have to act it out in silence. By the last round everyone has seen every card, so a half-remembered gesture or a one-word clue from earlier becomes a running joke that…0 - 4
Poetry for NeanderthalsGet your team to say the word on your card using only words of one syllable. Slip into a longer word and the other team gets to bop you with an inflatable club. That club does most of the work: within seconds everyone sounds like a caveman, and the strain of avoiding ordinary words is the…0 - 5
Wavelength (game)One player secretly sees where a target sits on a spectrum between two opposites and gives a single clue. Their team then has to agree where to turn the dial. The laughs come from finding out how strangely your friends think, and from the arguments when the team cannot agree whether a clue belongs…0 - 6
Snake OilEach round one player draws a customer card and becomes that customer. Everyone else combines two word cards from their hand into an invented product and gets 30 seconds to sell it. The customer buys the best pitch.
Defending a ridiculous two-word gadget with a straight face is the whole game, and…0 - 7
The Jackbox Party Pack 3 (2016)★ 8.2/10 on IGDBReleased Oct 18, 2016The digital pick: one copy runs on a TV or computer and everyone plays from their own phone, so there are no controllers to pass around. Quiplash 2, for 3 to 8 players, is the reason to buy it. Everyone writes an answer to the same silly prompt, then the room votes for the funniest, which means the…0 - 8
Herd Mentality (party game)Everyone writes an answer to the same question, and the aim is to match the majority rather than be right. Writing the most popular answer earns a cow; being the only odd one out lands you the pink cow, and you cannot win while it sits in front of you.
The debates over whether two slightly…0 - 9
Just One (board game)A cooperative word game: everyone writes a one-word clue to help a single guesser, but identical clues are canceled before the guesser sees them. Watching four people all write the obvious clue and wipe each other out is reliably funny, and because the table wins or loses together, nobody ends up…0 - 10
Codenames (board game)Two spymasters give one-word clues followed by a number, steering their teammates toward the right words in a grid of 25 while avoiding the other team's words and innocent bystanders. The comedy lives in the clues: a link that made perfect sense to the spymaster and to no one else, and a team…0
